Could four 1080p monitors be 4K on the cheap? Probably not... but keep reading.

Image Credit: Phoronix

Phoronix published an article for users interested in quad monitor gaming on Linux. Sure, you might think this is a bit excessive especially considering the bezel at the center of your screen. On the other hand, imagine you are playing a four player split-screen game. That would definitely get some attention. Each player would be able to tilt their screen out of the view of their opponents while only using a single computer.

In his 8-page editorial, Michael Larabel tests the official and popular open source drivers for both AMD and NVIDIA. The winner was NVIDIA's proprietary driver although the open source solution, Nouveau, seemed to fair the worst of the batch. This is the typical trade-off with NVIDIA. It was only just recent that The Green Giant opened up documentation for the other chefs in the kitchen... so these results may change soon.

If you are going to set up a multimonitor display at 5760x1200 or 5040x1050, but only have a single GPU or a pair of low powered ones, just what kind of performance can you expect? That is the question Techgage wanted to answer and to that purpose they tested frame rates at those resolutions with NVIDIA's GTX680 and two different 660 Ti's in SLI as well as an HD7970 and two different 7850s in Crossfire. As you might expect the game tested makes a lot of difference in the results, with many seeing the SLI'd 660 Ti's in the lead while other memory hungry games preferred the large cache of the Radeons. Check out the individual results of your favourite games in the full article.

"Considering next-gen cards are still months away, we didn't expect to bring any more GPU reviews until the second quarter of 2013. However, we realized there was a gap in our current-gen coverage: triple-monitor gaming. In fact, it's been almost two years since we last stress tested games at resolutions of up to 7680x1600.

We're going to mix things up a little this time. Instead of using each camp's ultra-pricey dual-GPU card (or the new $999 Titan), we're going to see how more affordable Crossfire and SLI setups handle triple-monitor gaming compared to today's single-GPU flagships."

The Tech Report tackles multi-monitor gaming in 3D with their latest technique of measuring graphical performance. Frame time seems to be very much present with some hardware when you attempt to play with this type of display but it seems the overall effect on your enjoyment is variable. When testing Deus Ex they found less instances of high frame time than with Battlefield 3 but found they noticed the impact more on Deus Ex than BF3. There are a lot of variables to account for in this overview, not only the differences between AMD and NVIDIA's implementation of the technology but also the differences between active shutter and passive glasses. Read on to see if you should wait for Microsoft to include 3D support in DirectX or if you can dive in right away.

"Join us as we slip on the funny glasses to assess the current state of stereoscopic 3D gaming on the PC."

KFA^2 is a leading European graphics card manufacturer for Nvidia based cards. Their latest card is the KFA^2 GTX 580 EX OC MDT X4, and it represents the top tier of their multi-display lineup.

As the name implies, the new GTX 580 EX OC MDT X4 card is based on Nvidia’s GTX 580 GPU. From there, the card is overclocked and outfitted with the ability to drive up to four displays. Using their “virtual single monitor mode,” the card is able to present an Eyefinity like display (via Nvidia Surround tech) to the operating system (as one giant display), and then stretch the output across three monitors. The resolution of the three monitor display can be up to 5760x1080. Interestingly the refresh rate needs to be at 50Hz. The card package will include the necessary driver and application software to make the multi-display work. There are three mini HDMI ports and one mini Display Port on the back of the card, and the three mini HDMI ports are used for the three monitor surround panel while the Display port can be hooked up to a fourth monitor that is not part of the main display group.

The card has 1.5 GB of GDDR5 memory as well as the same 384-bit memory interface; however, from there the core and memory clocks both get a nice overclock at 840 MHz and 2004 MHz respectively. Further, the KFA^2 model ditches the reference cooling solution for a custom LED lit affair with a total of three fans to keep the card frosty at the overclocked clock speeds. Graham Brown, the European Marketing Manager for KFA^2 stated that “all these features combine, has produced a new level to consider when looking at the GTX 580 range.”

The new graphics card will be available throughout Europe soon and will come with a 2 year warranty. No word yet on pricing but expect it to be somewhere around $540 USD.

The GTX560Ti MDT X5 (Multi Display Technology) can handle sending signal to 5 displays simultaneously which is something that no NVIDIA card could do before. AMD had the only GPUs which could handle multiple displays, you needed an SLI setup to manage NVIDIA Surround. [H]ard|OCP were lucky enough to get to play with this $330 mid-range GPU that knows a new trick and were suitably impressed by its ability to provide good gaming performance on three 1080p monitors. They also mention a GeForce 210 model that can handle up to four monitors for the non-gamer.

"With the new Galaxy GeForce GTX560Ti MDT X5 video card it is possible to output to 5 displays even though this is a single GPU video card. Enjoy NVIDIA multi-display spanned resolution gaming without the need for two cards! Can this GTX 560 Ti based video card stand up in the latest games when spanned across three displays? We are surprised."